


Just Came To Say

by easternfront



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 15:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19726690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easternfront/pseuds/easternfront
Summary: Eames spends a few moments visiting his past. He is in need of an answer to one question.A short drabble where Eames faces his old man and finds some kind of peace.





	Just Came To Say

The bus came to a halt with a huge screech from the breaks. People began exiting the it with angry and sweaty faces: it was nearly 30 degrees outside and based on the overall look of the double decker its air condition was non existent or just incredibly poor. Just as Eames thought even this one was a dead end wait and old man with a walker slowly stepped off the bus. Just seconds later the doors closed behind the man and the dark grey fumes surrounded the old man.

Barnet had a tube connection but he’d somehow known the old man would not use it, even after all these years. He was wearing a two size too small mustard coloured knitted vest and worn smooth corduroy trousers, both of which had seen better days. Someone had used a different coloured thread to mend the vests side seam, surely he hadn’t done it himself?

Old man had a large Ikea bag hanging at the front of the walker with wheels and it swung around as the man began a slow waddle off the high street. Eames sat in the small crooked chair of a shitty pizzeria for as long as he saw the man turn away from sight. He could just leave and head towards the city. He could just take the next flight from Heathrow to Los Angeles. Or then he could just follow the man and do what he had intend to do since last week.

Eames stood up and sauntered towards the corner and saw that despite the old man’s large size he had already rolled down a good part of six-seven houses. It had been awhile since Eames had ventured here, 1997 or a year later, just after his 20th birthday. All the houses looked different now: bigger and flashier, more expensive. Actually most of them were new build and the old bungalow seemed like someone had planted a turd in the middle of the table.

The few steps up from the curb slowed the man down and he sat gasping for breath on the crumbling little departing fence by the doors. Eames slowly walked up to the man.  
“Hello there.”  
Without turning the old man began talkin: “What you want? I won’t sell! I’ve told you people already…”  
“I’m not here to buy.” Eames took off his sunglasses and folded them into his breast pocket.

For a while the man looked confused, as if he didn’t realise what he’d say next. Standing closer now Eames could hear his elevated breath.  
“Hell, why are you here?”  
“Just here to say hello.”  
“Well you’ve said it now.”  
The long silence following made Eames uncomfortable. Why had he come? To refresh memories? To look around? Be mean?  
“Nice houses around here nowadays. Perhaps you should take whatever they offer you while the house still stands.”  
“Stop telling me what to do.”  
“I’m not just stating the obvious. You want help with your stuff?” As he was reaching the bag the old man swatted his hand away: “Do not touch my things! What do you want?”

Eames sighed and took a step back: “I don’t know. Last week I decided to come and see you and now I am here. Spur of the moment...and it keeps Lucy of my back.”  
Man looked up and shouted: “You after money? I don’t have any and neither does Lucy so you can bugger of!”  
Eames smiled: “You think I want money? Oh no, thank you for thinking that I don’t have any. If you’d asked me ten years ago if I needed money I might have said yes to it. I don’t need money.”

It was odd how you notice emotions slightly after they are already raging. He’d come here to have a win, to humiliate this old man. To make him feel sad, pathetic and lonely but not that he was here...he had started to feel something entirely different: pity. Pity about the man who for the last fifty years had been nothing but mean and spiteful and now lived almost entirely alone.

“Lucy come to visit you?”  
“Yes, she’s a good daughter, good daughter.” The old man was patting his pockets and soon handed a key to Eames. “Open that door and carry this wretched thing inside!” Eames took the key and opened the door. The hallway was full of newspapers and magazines. A strong smell of damp wafted against his face. He lifted the entire walker through the hallway and planted it in the middle of a surprisingly clean kitchen. “Does someone clean for you here?”  
“Yes, Lucy sends this small thai woman to do the kitchen. She refuses to do the rest.”

He could hear the old man taking slow steps behind him and sit down with a heavy thud in one of the kitchen chairs. Eames started to move towards the bag but before he could reach it his phone rang. **A. Calling.** He rejected the call.  
“Don’t touch my bag. Now that we are inside and no one can hear, what do you really want?”  
Eames sighed and leaned against the fridge: “I came to tell you to fuck off and give you this.” He pulled out a four bundles of pristine 50£ notes and threw them in the middle of the table. “I thought a good son might be able to wish his old man a happy birthday. A happy 80th at that.”

********

The old man looked at the money, reached for it across the table and stroked the band holding the notes together. He took the bundles to his hands and looked at them: “Where did you get these? Who did you steal these from?”  
Eames scoffed and walked to the window: “I made them. That and many thousands more and now I’m giving some of it to you. You don’t want to sell but you could fix this house up for Lucy before you…”

“Well...I DON’T WANT YOUR...DIRTY MONEY!” Eames felt the bundles hit his back. He took a deep breath before he turned.  
“Well, well. Less than five minutes in and you already riding your high horse. You know what I ask every time I talk to Lucy? Is he dead yet? And you know what? She always has to answer: no, not yet.”  
Eames picked up the money and placed it in the sink: “You know someone told me that we all yearn for reconciliation, for catharsis, but I beg to differ: no man yearns for catharsis if it means forgiving a man who drove his son away, his daughter to insanity and his wife to her early grave.”

He saw the old man’s face turn into a gruesome growl: “Your mother died because she fell ill because of you two. You two poisoned her mind against normal living. You became a dirty thief and Lucy went crazy. I tried to raise…”  
“We know, you tried to raise us to become meek and subservient but we are not like that! How long does it take you to understand that? Mmh?”

He stopped and turned around. This was not what he came here to do. This was not something he wanted to do, not really. He’d spend thousands of hours trying to find a calm space in his raging mind and gotten four to five different diagnosis from psychologists around the world: ADD, ADHD, Aspergers, Bipolar disorder. It all came down to him having incredibly lot of rage trapped inside of him which he needed a healthy outlet other than crime to push it out. Before becoming and old and angry man he’d wanted to close doors and open others.

He had only one question to ask and by losing it he might have missed his chance to ask it. “Could you have avoided all this bitterness dad?” His father looked at him with his mouth open: “What!”  
“How might have you been able to avoid becoming this.” He made a wide gesture starting from the old man and waved his hand towards rest of the house.  
The old man slumped in his chair and looked away. For awhile Eames thought he had not heard the question but apparently the old man had thought hard on his answer: “Loving more.” The voice came out almost inaudible but Eames had heard enough: “Take care. We will not see each other again. Fix the house for Lucy, she likes the it.”

He opened the kitchen door and stepped outside to the small back garden. The warm sunshine reminded him of all the places outside of England that he’d gotten to. On his own means. This small garden bore no resemblance to the garden his mother had so tentatively cared for when he and Lucy were kids. It was now overgrown and overlooked by all these huge houses surrounding it.

He walked to the side wall and nipped a big pink rose from the climbing bush and stuck it to his now empty breast pocket. Arthur would love a beautiful boutonniere tonight for his new fitted suits he had gone to pick up at Savile Row.


End file.
